Essay About Further Production Of Refrigerators And Kelvinator Company

Ge and Six Sigma
Essay title: Ge and Six Sigma
Six Sigma (6¦Т) ЁC A Revolution for the G.E. Culture
The history of General Electric and its products and research is one that is outstanding
and marked by inventions which serve as milestones in technological advancement
throughout time. Such inventions and technological advancements span from Edisons
invention of the light bulb to jet-engines. Specifically, General Electrics entrance into the
refrigeration market around 1923 (Cowan 132) can be further analyzed by first focusing
on the times leading up to the invention and further production of refrigerators.
Prior to any type of mechanical refrigeration, families and commercials alike utilized ice
to keep their foods cool. Such practices required large amounts of ice making ice a
“commodity for export”(Lynes, 123) giving rise to ice manufacturing. Households and
businesses would have ice blocks delivered to them where they would then be stored in
ice boxes. This early form of refrigeration was costly and required maintenance, but
began to expand the capabilities of shipping and preserving food. Cowan states that “the
need for mechanical refrigeration was growing as cities began to expand, both in Europe
and in the United States, and ever larger quantities of food had to be preserved for longer
periods of time as people continued to move farther from the places where it was
grown.”(Cowan, 129). The emergence of the mechanical refrigerator in the 1900s
revolutionized the preservation, transportation and refrigeration of food and had far
reaching effects on the economy, the national diet, and home life of America.
The mechanical refrigerator can be divided into two types, the gas refrigerator also
known as absorption refrigerator, and the electric or compression refrigerator. Both types
of refrigerators operate by the actions of “vaporization and the condensation of a liquid
called the refrigerant” (Cowan, 128) The difference in the two types of mechanical
refrigerators lies in how each controls the condensation and the vaporization of its
refrigerant. (World book Encyclopedia, 199-202) The electric refrigerator uses a
compressor which is a piece of machinery requiring electricity that acts as a pump. The
gas refrigerator on the other hand does not require electricity but gas to heat the
refrigerant. The gas or “absorption refrigerator consequently does not require a motor”
and “need have no moving parts at all, hence no parts that are likely to break or to make
noise”. (Cowan, 129) Prior to the mass production of refrigerator though, not only was
owning one considered to be rare and expensive for the individual but also hard to
maintain for the commercial owner. (Cowan, 130) This left room for improvement in the
market of refrigerators and led to the development of refined production techniques.
Production of refrigerators was on the rise but not produced on a large-scale until
1918 by Goss and Copeland called the Kelvinator company (Cowan, 131) and it was
about this time that General Electric became interested in entering the market. A man by
the name of A.R. Stevenson was hired to research the market. He found that 56
companies were involved in the business at the time, some of which were heavily
capitalized. Also at this time in 1923 the cheapest unit would have cost the consumer
$450 which was an rather large amount considering the $2000 average salary. (Cowan,
132)